I've tested my strength everywhere. You advised me to do that, "in order to know myself." This testing for myself, and for show, proved it to be boundless, as before all my life. In front of your very eyes I endured a slap from your brother; I acknowledged my marriage publicly. But what to apply my strength to—that I have never seen, nor do I see it now, despite your encouragements in Switzerland, which I believed. I am as capable now as ever before of wishing to do a good deed, and I take pleasure in that; along with it, I wish for evil and also feel pleasure. But both the one and the other, as always, are too shallow, and are never very much. My desires are far too weak; they cannot guide. One can cross a river on a log, but not on a chip. All this so that you don't think I'm going to Uri with any hopes.

As always, I do not blame anyone. I've tried great debauchery and exhausted my strength in it; but I don't like debauchery and I did not want it. You've been observing me lately. Do you know that I even looked at these negators of ours with spite, envying them their hopes? But your fears were empty: I could not be their comrade, because I shared nothing. Nor could I do it out of ridicule, for spite, and not because I was afraid of the ridiculous—I cannot be afraid of the ridiculous—but because, after all, I have the habits of a decent man and felt disgusted. Still, if I had more spite and envy for them, I might even have gone over to them. You can judge how easy it has been for me and how I've tossed about!

Dear friend, tender and magnanimous being whom I divined! Perhaps you dream of giving me so much love and of pouring upon me so much of the beautiful from your beautiful soul, that you hope in that way finally to set up some goal for me? No, you had better be more careful: my love will be as shallow as I myself am, and you will be unhappy. Your brother told me that he who loses his ties with his earth also loses his gods, that is, all his goals. One can argue endlessly about everything, but what poured out of me was only negation, with no magnanimity and no force. Or not even negation. Everything is always shallow and listless. Magnanimous Kirillov could not endure his idea and—shot himself; but I do see that he was magnanimous because he was not in his right mind. I can never lose my mind, nor can I ever believe an idea to the same degree as he did. I cannot even entertain an idea to the same degree. I could never, never shoot myself!

I know I ought to kill myself, to sweep myself off the earth like a vile insect; but I'm afraid of suicide, because I'm afraid of showing magnanimity. I know it will be one more deceit—the last deceit in an endless series of deceits. What's the use of deceiving oneself just so as to play at magnanimity? There never can be indignation or shame in me; and so no despair either.

Forgive me for writing so much. I've come to my senses, and this is accidental. This way a hundred pages are too little and ten lines are enough. To call for a "nurse," ten lines are enough.

Since I left, I've been living six stations away, in the stationmaster's house. I got to know him while I was on a spree in Petersburg five years ago. No one knows I'm living here. Write care of him. I enclose the address.

Nikolai Stavrogin.

Darya Pavlovna went at once and showed the letter to Varvara Petrovna. She read it and asked Dasha to step out so that she could read it again by herself; but she somehow very quickly called her again. "Will you go?" she asked, almost timidly.

"I will," Dasha replied.

"Get ready! We're going together."

Dasha looked at her questioningly.

"And what is there for me to do here now? Does it make any difference? I, too, will register in Uri and live in the ravine... Don't worry, I won't bother you."

They quickly began getting ready, in order to catch the noon train. But before half an hour had gone by, Alexei Yegorych came from Skvoreshniki. He reported that Nikolai Vsevolodovich had "suddenly" arrived that morning, on the early train, and was in Skvoreshniki, but "in such a state that he wouldn't answer any questions, walked through all the rooms, and locked himself in his half..."

"I concluded on coming to report without his orders," Alexei Yegorych added, with a very imposing air.

Varvara Petrovna gave him a piercing look and asked no questions. The carriage was readied instantly. She went with Dasha. On the way, it is said, she crossed herself frequently.

All the doors in "his half were open, and Nikolai Vsevolodovich was nowhere to be found.

"Maybe in the attic, ma'am?" Fomushka said cautiously.

Remarkably, several servants followed Varvara Petrovna into "his half; the rest of the servants all waited in the reception room. Never before would they have allowed themselves such a breach of etiquette. Varvara Petrovna noticed it but said nothing.

They went upstairs to the attic. There were three rooms there; no one was found in any of them.

"Could he maybe have gone up there?" someone pointed at the door to the garret. Indeed, the permanently closed door to the garret was now unlocked and standing wide open. It led to a long, very narrow, and terribly steep wooden stairway that went up almost under the roof. There was a sort of little room there, too.

"I won't go up there. Why on earth would he climb up there?" Varvara Petrovna turned terribly pale, looking around at the servants. They stared at her and said nothing. Dasha was trembling.

Varvara Petrovna rushed up the stairs; Dasha followed her; but as soon as she entered the garret, she cried out and fell unconscious.

The citizen of canton Uri was hanging just inside the door. On the table lay a scrap of paper with the penciled words: "Blame no one; it was I." With it on the table there also lay a hammer, a piece of soap, and a big nail, evidently prepared in reserve. The strong silk cord upon which Nikolai Vsevolodovich had hanged himself, evidently prepared and chosen beforehand, was heavily soaped. Everything indicated premeditation and consciousness to the last minute.

Our medical men, after the autopsy, completely and emphatically ruled out insanity.

Appendix

The Original Part Two, Chapter 9

At Tikhon's

I

Nikolai Vsevolodovich did not sleep that night and spent the whole of it sitting on the sofa, often turning his fixed gaze towards one point in the corner by the chest of drawers. His lamp burned all night. Around seven in the morning he fell asleep sitting up, and when Alexei Yegorovich, as their custom had been established once and for all, came into his room at exactly half past nine with a morning cup of coffee, and woke him up by his appearance, he, having opened his eyes, seemed unpleasantly surprised that he could have slept so long and that it was already so late. He hastily drank his coffee, hastily dressed, and hurriedly left the house. To Alexei Yegorovich's cautious inquiry: "Will there be any orders?"—he answered nothing. He walked along the street, looking at the ground, deep in thought, and only at moments raising his head and suddenly showing now and then some vague but intense disquiet. At one intersection, still not far from his house, a crowd of men crossed his path, fifty or more; they walked decorously, almost silently, in deliberate order. By the shop near which he had to wait for about a minute, someone said they were "Shpigulin workers." He barely paid any attention to them. Finally, at around half past ten, he reached the gates of our Savior - St. Yefimi Bogorodsky monastery,^[211] on the outskirts of town, by the river. It was only here that he suddenly seemed to remember something, stopped, hastily and anxiously felt for something in his side pocket—and grinned. Entering the grounds, he asked the first server he met how to find Bishop Tikhon, who was living in retirement in the monastery. The server began bowing and led him off at once. By the porch at the end of a long, two-storied monastery building, they met a fat and gray-haired monk, who imperiously and deftly took him over from the server and led him through a long, narrow corridor, also kept bowing (although, being unable to bend down owing to his fatness, he merely jerked his head frequently and abruptly) and kept inviting him to please come in, though Stavrogin was following him even without that. The monk kept posing all sorts of questions and talked about the father archimandrite;^[212] receiving no answers, he became more and more deferential. Stavrogin noticed that he was known there, though, as far as he could remember, he had come there only in childhood. When they reached the door at the very end of the corridor, the monk opened it as if with an imperious hand, inquired familiarly of the cell attendant who sprang over to him whether they could come in, and, without even waiting for an answer, flung the door wide and, inclining, allowed the "dear" visitor to pass by: then, having been rewarded, he quickly vanished, all but fled. Nikolai Vsevolodovich entered a small room, and at almost the same moment there appeared in the doorway of the adjoining room a tall and lean man of about fifty-five, in a simple household cassock, who looked as if he were somewhat ill, with a vague smile and a strange, as if shy, glance. This was the very Tikhon of whom Nikolai Vsevolodovich had heard for the first time from Shatov, and of whom, since then, he had managed to gather certain information.